U.S. Rep. Peter Welch / EMILY McMANAMY/FREE PRESS

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Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. / file

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-VT / RYAN MERCER/FREE PRESS

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The television news show “60 Minutes” last week shined a spotlight on the ever-growing phenomenon of so-called leadership political action committees as a way for political candidates to raise and spend money even more freely than they already were doing.

Slush funds, personal expense accounts used to support lavish lifestyles were among the descriptions of the accounts in the report on “60 Minutes.”

Like just about every member of Congress, all three members of Vermont’s congressional delegation have leadership PACs.

Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., never had one of the leadership PACs until this year, when he started Maple PAC.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has the Progressive Voters of America PAC, which dates to 2004.

Sen. Patrick Leahy has the Green Mountain PAC, which dates to 2005.

A look at the three members’ leadership PACs shows no clear indication that they’ve used them to pay for their own thinly veiled vacations or to support family members, as 60 Minutes showed some had.

They do show that PACs go a long way toward supporting people who know how to run PACs. Money goes to those who do the fundraising, those who manage the intricacies of filing federal campaign finance reports and those who can put it all to work on the World Wide Web.

Two years ago, Leahy’s Green Mountain PAC gave contributions of $284,000 and spent $11,000 on fundraising and $4,800 on administration costs. Leahy's top three recipients of money last election cycle are:

• Campaign Finance Consultants at $174,000

• Carolyn Dwyer, who manages his campaign finance reports, at $96,000

• Trilogy Interactive, a campaign consulting firm, at $37,000

Sanders gave out $107,500 in contributions and spent $4,300 on fundraising and $240 in administration costs. Sanders appears to spend less on consultants to run his PAC. His top recipients of money were candidates.

Both Leahy and Sanders gave money to a field of like-minded candidates. This year, Leahy has given $15,000 to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee as well as to various Democratic candidates. He gave $5,000 to the Massachusetts Democratic Committee and $1,000 to the Vermont Democratic Committee.

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The Center for Responsive Politics describes the reasoning behind leadership PACs this way: “Leadership PACs provide a way for candidates to fund their travel, office expenses, consultants, polling and other non-campaign expenses. Leadership PACs are also used to fund other candidates’ campaigns, usually new candidates or threatened incumbents. Politicians often use their PACs to donate to other candidates because they are considering seeking a leadership position in Congress, a higher office, or leverage within their own party as they show off their fund-raising ability.”

PACs allow a politician to give more money in support of other candidates than they could through their own candidate accounts.

Maple PAC

Welch formed Maple PAC this year for some of those reasons. “He will use it to make contributions to candidates he supports here in Vermont and around the country,” campaign manager Jon Copans said.

With $5,000 in the PAC account, as of the last report June 30, Welch had shown he spent $424 mostly in expenses incurred in creating the PAC. His $5,000 came entirely from U.S. Cellular Corp.’s PAC. Most leadership PACs are heavily funded by corporate PACs.

Welch, who is chief deputy whip in the House, will likely need a few campaign cycles to become a player in the field, said Eric Davis, retired Middlebury College political science professor. “He’s thinking down the road of moving up. It helps you move up the leadership ladder,” he said.

Welch didn’t need a leadership PAC to pull off an event akin to those described on “60 Minutes,” where politicians manage to have their meetings in places that are more swank than your average Hampton Inn off the highway.

Welch held a fundraiser in Woodstock in September that featured $2,489 worth of catering from Simon Pearce’s restaurant in Quechee; and $4,717 in food, lodging and transportation from the Woodstock Inn.

Green Mountain PAC

Leahy’s more-established Green Mountain PAC has a website, www.greenmountainpac.com, which lays out 14 senators the PAC supports. (One of them includes New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, who is erroneously listed as being from Maine, though the description goes on to describe her work in New Hampshire.)

Green Mountain PAC raised $750,000 in 2012, but this year is still in the early stages of fundraising with $209,555 spent and $45,162 on hand.

His money comes from PACs connected to many of the biggest telecommunications and media companies in the country, including Comcast, General Electric, Disney and Microsoft. Those companies are looking to Leahy to remember them when it comes to legal issues before his Senate Judiciary Committee, Davis said.

Progressive Voters of America PAC

Sanders’ Progressive Voters of America PAC spent $129,000 in 2012. This year, his PAC has $4,300 on hand. All $5,000 of his new money this year came from Sanders’ candidate fund.

Aside from that, Sanders’ PAC money has come in past years largely from labor groups’ PACs, including the Sheet Metal Workers Union and the American Postal Workers Union.